Back End Developer

GemPool is seeking an experienced Senior Backend Developer to join a global entertainment technology and data analytics business operating within the cinema and film distribution industry.

The company provides data and software solutions that help cinemas, film studios and distributors track box-office performance, manage operations and make informed commercial decisions.

This role will focus on developing new backend products, building and maintaining REST APIs, and improving the systems responsible for collecting, processing and analysing large volumes of cinema transaction data. You will also contribute to ongoing platform modernisation, cloud readiness and the adoption of AI-assisted software development practices., * Develop and maintain backend services and REST APIs using Java and Jakarta EE.

• Build and enhance data ingestion processes, ETL pipelines and scheduled batch jobs.
• Process, validate and aggregate large volumes of transaction-level data.
• Write and optimise SQL queries across SingleStore and PostgreSQL.
• Work with Redis for caching and data access.
• Improve data ingestion reliability through validation, error handling, monitoring and reprocessing.
• Support backend development for new web and mobile applications.
• Contribute to cloud modernisation and containerisation initiatives.
• Develop automated tests using JUnit and follow test-first development practices.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering teams on new product development.
• Participate in code reviews and maintain clean, scalable and reliable application architecture.
• Use AI coding tools to support development workflows while maintaining ownership of code quality and delivery.

• 6+ years’ professional experience in Java backend development.
• Strong experience with Java EE / Jakarta EE, including JAX-RS, CDI and Servlets.
• Experience working with TomEE, Payara or similar Java application servers.
• Strong SQL and JDBC skills, including query optimisation and transaction management.
• Hands-on experience with data integration, ETL, batch processing or file ingestion.
• Experience with Redis and relational databases such as PostgreSQL.
• Experience developing and securing REST APIs using JWT or OAuth2.
• Understanding of API versioning and maintaining backward compatibility.
• Experience with JUnit, automated testing and test-first development.
• Comfortable working with Docker, GitLab CI and Linux environments.
• Practical experience using Claude Code or OpenAI Codex for AI-assisted and agent-driven software development.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work collaboratively within an engineering team.

Desirable Experience

• Experience with SingleStore (MemSQL), distributed SQL or columnar databases.
• AWS experience, particularly S3, ECS/EKS, SQS, EventBridge and Secrets Manager.
• Experience migrating on-premise Java applications to cloud environments.
• Experience upgrading Java versions (11 to 17/21) and Hibernate (5 to 6).
• Experience working with media, entertainment, financial or other large-scale transaction datasets.